University Challenge (also featuring Only Connect and other BBC quiz shows)

His two books are actually okay! The second one is better -- which shows some sense that he's interested in improving as a writer rather than just coldly cashing in (although that, too). It's all a bit (consciously) sub-Kate Atkinson, readymade for BBC at 8pm, but I've read worse, and there are good jokes.

33 on UC this week - might be a PB!

Crete, insulin, pulsars, cross, Descartes, Oklahoma, Washington & Idaho, Marie Curie, turtle, snapping turtles, Stockton to Darlington, percolator, Greek, anion and cation, Nauru, phosphate, Magritte, epoch, Holocene, sloth, Clarksville, Georgia, Chattanooga, The Haunting of Hill House, Borgen, The Killing, The Bridge, The Brothers Karamazov, uranium, bassoon, trombone, frog, Georgia.

... It's the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine.

Great job, think I got 24 or 25.

"The only thing I know is that the kimberley plain is in western australia" - well that is pretty useful if the question is what australian state is kimberley in.

got nowhere near 30, or even 20 (again, only half watching) but i did get the lottery and oboe which are missing from that list

23 this week.

Beautiful, Corazon Aquino, Indira Gandhi, Leeds Castle, Boticelli, grenadine, Kiribati, Dominica, Uganda, MASH, Wolf Hall, Valentina Tereshkova, Paint Your Wagon, Oklahoma, jaguar, Catherine the Great, Crimea, orchid, Do The Right Thing, Selma, Dr Mabuse, Moebius strip, craters

20.5 (the half being the first name of octogenarian astronaut), only 6 of which match the above list.

26 Beautiful golda meier corizon acquino indira gandhi knitting juneteenth mash joan didion mushroom snowdonia wolf hall cae tereshkova toucan jack catherine the great crimean orchid gorgonzola do the right thing black panther bus moebius strip han ginsberg craters

Interesting to see the ledge's answers as there were several he got right where I vacillated between two or more possible answers and went the wrong way, or I hesitated, i.e.

considered Meier, but went for Ben Gurion. Went for Lake District instead of Snowdonia, forgetting Snowdon was taller than Scafell, would have got toucan and gorgonzola but hesitated and couldn't quite recall what Black Panther was called.

Dream team for UC The Professionals: Me, ledge, Ailsa (team captain) and koogs. PF as sub.

i did write them down, in red on a busy TV listings magazine, whether i can read them now is another question

beautiful, knitting, June teenth, mash, snowdon, wolf hall, wally (funk), annie get your gun, 1812, toucan, jack, catherine, crimea, clara bow, orchid, gorgon-zola, do the right thing, persia, selma, moebius

not including perhaps a couple that i think i would have got eventually but which were spoiled by them answering too quickly. Valentina for instance, panther.

my favourite was the long winded question about the year which i had no clue about until he mentioned it was also the year Dickens was born...

to much overlap with ledge's for me to contribute much

to much overlap with ledge's for me to contribute much

*this* time. Plus every little counts...

I think I said 1821 for the year and it was 1812. Maybe I was just transposing the numbers in my head. Probably would've still won it if it had been on Richard Osman's House of Games.

We were a bit freaked out by the familiar faces on OC, but I was pleased with myself for the two "hard" ones I did get, especially the one involving Brad Pitt.

(my list is only 19.5, i didn't write down the German film gambler / strictly dancer)

I think I knew that one coz it is the name of an ace track by the band Propaganda!

I'll try and remember and count/write down next week.

I think I've known people on every episode of Only Connect this series, which makes showing off about getting the ones they didn't really hard to do on social media

i have that propaganda single and the comic book adaptation of the film (by Fritz Lang). lovely painted art by john muth iirc, square bound, published by epic.

think i need to focus on the stuff ledge doesn't like. horror films and, er...

not epic, eclipse

think i need to focus on the stuff ledge doesn't like. horror films and, er...

classical music, musicals, music since ooooh 2010 at most, royalty, most geography, I'm not great at dates...

OC was surprisingly easy for me also, because I'm normally way worse than the teams. I got the M_______ P___ one on the second clue when none of them got it with all the clues.

how is mangan on pointless? i like him on * artist of the year on sky arts but i guess that's an entirely different thing

He's much more at ease in the role than Sally Lindsay was.

I'm loving Stephen Mangan's mock disdain of the format. "If you want to spoil a date, you can bring that fact out."

10 is pretty poor for first round 8(

wordle, devine, hairspray, median, Epstein Barr, chicken pox, tarkovsky, vermeer, howler, fr(omage)

should've got more of the art. did spot that he was 1000x out because tonnes and pico-grammes but... there were too many of those maths questions.

thing i also need to do - memorise atomic numbers

was amazed that none of them got Tom Wolfe, maybe another one for the "authors nobody reads anymore" list?

I forgot to count my own score but man those mathsy questions were dull.

Today’s “either I am too old or they are too dumb” moments:

— The contestants who thought John Waters directed Footloose
— “Hunter S. Davies”

As soon as Paxo said the round was going to be about John Waters I was like "these nerds are toast".

The Divine question was so easy Paxo might as well have said “Please repeat after me, the word divine“ but I guess people’s mileage doth vary

I only just realised they were getting the names Hunter S. Thompson and Hunter Davies confused! I'd be surprised if today's students are really aware of Hunter Davies, unless they are Spurs fans and have read his book about the club, or indeed his Beatles biography.

My mother with a big fan of his column Father's Day in Punch.

Anyway, I got 24 this week I think,but am on a bus to London and my list of answers is at home, so my comparison with the rest of youse will have to wait.

* was a big fan,I should say.

I'd be surprised if today's students are really aware of Hunter Davies,

tbf the guy who mixed those up looked to be in his 50's

Fair enough. I find it hard to concentrate on which people said what *and* answer the questions myself. Multitasking doesn't work, people.

Hunter Davies still writes a regular column in the Sunday Times - usually trolling inter-generational fairness and talking about how much tax he has paid.

22 this week. Nail-biting tie-breaker!

Isabella, Poland, Benz, Crab Nebula, New York City, malaria, lute & dilute, duck-billed platypus, zero, Pueblo, New Mexico, hermetic, N-U-N, hawk, Chagos Islands, Ottoman Empire, Ealing, Bill Bryson, volte face, lead, lithium, Nice.

Kicking myself @ not getting Bletchley Park. So obvious in retrospect.

First mother & son combo on the same team. I noticed they were sat as far from each other as possible.

slipped a day this week because of the sport.

i haven't watched last week's UC yet.

LL on pointless. i only saw the one but she looked quite comfortable.

Was this on over the last couple of weeks.
I checked to see if my video box thing had space to record last night then checked the tv guide and found it replaced by sport. Didn't fully check channel for rest of bight.
Checked if it had recorded previous week and nothing there.
I'm doing an irish class at the time now. But do enjoy UC.

was on last Monday, but not yesterday (rugby)

I'm wondering now whether there was a schedule change last week as well because of the political mess. i haven't actual checked the recording... yep, it's there

OC - I don't think the Road Runners actually got that second question (West and Exotic etc)

There was some weird thing with UC on the Sky EPG last week where it was listed as a different series, so it doesn't sit with the rest of the recordings. Very annoying.

I was very frustrated with the young people tonight. It's one thing not to know the films, but who doesn't recognize Cary Grant, for the love of pete?

Yeah, that was a bizarre ruling - there was zero explanation, they just made some noises, it turns out no-one knew who either Elvis *or* Lou Costello was, then hey have some points anyway for just mumbling about names a bit xpost

The music round on UC was also quite painful. Marchant clearly knew eras/genres even if not familiar with the artists, then deferred to her captain who was just picked random names out of thin air. Though I suspect both Dusty Springfield and Tracy Chapman are filed under "old stuff" when you're that age and clearly aren't interested at all in music

In other news, I have to play against recent UC sensations (i.e. noticeable enough for shit tabloids to run stories based on Twitter reaction to them) Michael Hutchison, Michael Kohn and Fatima Sheriff in an online quiz this week #prayforailsa

Ah, you'll batter them.

then deferred to her captain who was just picked random names out of thin air.

She also did that thing I hate of going "it's not that" when she doesn't know what it is. Offer an alternative or shush.

Well, Marchant (Marissa? prob not) got The Moodies "Nights in White Satin" very swiftly, I was like ok here goes.. but, no.

pointless today had "Edith Wharton TAOI" as a *pointless* answer in an american novels round. not just the contestants but the entire 100 people they asked didn't know it.

She also did that thing I hate of going "it's not that" when she doesn't know what it is. Offer an alternative or shush.

I kinda think that was an attempt at going "please don't say Tracy Chapman as a 60s singer" attempt, it's less embarrassing to just say you don't know. It's harsh being judged on TV (she says with a TV appearance coming up which I entirely approached as of I had the judging eye of the casual viewer in my face at all times)

Man I cannot construct coherent sentences.

On a "spot the intro" round, didn't know it so guessed the first song that came to mind. "Sailing" Rod Stewart. Because I had to say something, and it was just about to be issued.

Of course, by the time the show aired, said song was the biggest thing around, and of course I looked daft as the intro was nothing like it.

Then again, nobody ever mentioned it...

Liked this week as there was lots of gettable science. I was very impressed by Marchant getting Nights in White Satin so quickly - had no clue on this one. I like a good close contest like that; shame the team from the Fens clinched it.

My score was 27 this week: mole, Sherwood Forest, Offa's Dyke, neuron, dendrite, normal distribution, Stalin, Marshall, Epicurus, Maslow, Tyne, Romania, Alcatraz, Louisiana, The Carepenters, Scylla & Charybdis, Chicago, legume, Laburnum, New Territories, Mao, fructose, tango, 2nd law of thermodynamics, Gregor Mendel, Tale of Peter Rabbit, Kintyre.

Yet another Oxford college trounced by a Cambridge one.

Found this week's quite difficult - got 20 right, i.e. Cardinals, Marlins, Paisley, Coventry, Rachel, Shield, abstemious, Ray Bradbury, Sweden, Malta and Cyprus, buckminsterfullerene, Nepal, Bangladesh, Bexley, Barnet, silverfish, surfing and skateboarding, Yugoslavia, Iona, Mars